Some parents (and some children) view homework as a problem.   Here the Uns apply their standard creativity routine:  Reversal.    

Teachers assign problems as homework.  You might guess that one of the main functions of homework is practice in solving problems.  But the practice can’t be just for solving those particular problems in the assignment.  Those have already been solved many times over. There is not much market for used solutions to old problems.  Maybe that’s one reason why children don’t see much need for homework. 

Homework must be practice for solving new problems.  The kind of problems children need to solve when they grow up.  The kind of problems they will solve as parents.  For example, homework.  Now there is a problem worth solving.  And it doesn’t have an old, used solution that everybody already knows about. 

So let’s take a mythical parent.  P. A. Rant.  P.A has decided to treat homework as a problem rather than an annoyance.

Annoyances, you put up with.  Problems, you solve.

P. A. starts with the problem:  “I have to keep prodding my child to get homework done.”  But P. A. knows that the place to look for solutions is not in the problem, but in where you want to be with the solution.    “I want my child to do the homework with little or no prodding.”

If other people are involved in the problem,
maybe you want them involved in the solution.

P. A. hangs a large sheet of paper on the wall of the child’s room.  It has one box labeled: “PROBLEM:  What’s wrong with homework?”  P. A. gives the child a pad of sticky notes. 

The child’s first job, P. A. explains, is to think of five things that are wrong with homework, to write them on the sticky notes, and to stick them where they belong.  P. A. further explains that when that job is finished, they will start solving the problem together.  P. A. indicates that a good job on this may take several days.